Thursday, 20 October 2011

Android development has opened the doors to various exciting opportunities. Android developers have come up with Android mobile applications whose functionality has grown vast in scope and range. For an Android phone user, rooting will give more control in customizing his phone to suit his needs.

What is rooting?

Rooting is similar to jail breaking on the iPhone. In Android devices, software like SU (switch user) exploits the vulnerability in the operating system code and gives the user complete control over his phone. The various advantages of rooting your Android device are listed below.

Rooting allows you to backup an image of your Android-powered device onto an SD card. This allows you to install and run a new ROM (customized, after-market OS). If you are not satisfied with the new ROM, you can always restore the previous image from the SD card.

Save space

Rooting allows you to enable your Android apps to be moved onto an SD card even if the Android developers have not enabled this feature. This might be helpful in case you have reached the memory space bottleneck and need to shift some apps onto a removable media like an SD card.

Some apps require rooting

Some special Android apps specifically require rooting. For example ROM Manager requires rooting in order to flash ROMs from an SD card onto your phone. Another app that requires rooting is setCPU that is used to under/overclock the device.

A caution

Be thorough on instructions before rooting your phone. Improper execution will result in a bricked phone. A bricked phone is one that has a damaged firmware or software and the phone is rendered unusable.

Summary

Rooting is a great trick to get to use your phone's full power and functionality. Customized Android ROMs have today evolved to cover full advanced access controls. The best way to get started is to Google for information on rooting your phone by the search string “<phone name> custom ROM.”

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Sandeep Patekar

MD @ Mobi People INC. Working For Clients for Various types of mobile application / software development. Working from last 10 years in web based software & Moile based application development industry.